Furzehill Observatory

My main telescope is a 35cm F10 Schmidt Cassegrain mounted on a Paramount ME (1).  For variable star work I use a Starlight Xpress filter wheel, a clear filter, Johnson/Cousins BVRI filters (2) and a Starlight Xpress SXVR-H16 CCD camera with additional fan cooling (3).  A light emitting screen is used to calibrate the system and the observatory's computer times are regularly updated via the internet (4) to ensure that they are kept accurate to within one second.

 

AIP4WIN (5) is used to process the images.  Photometry is done with the BAAVSS's CCD Spreadsheet (6) and Peranso (7) is employed for period searches.  Astrometrica (8) is sometimes used to determine the position and 'new' objects are occasionally checked  with the Minor Planets Checker (9).  External hard drives are used to back up the data from time to time and a printer is installed to produce charts, etc., as required.

 

The telescope and I are housed separately in relatively cold/dark and warm/light rooms and all of the equipment is controlled by two computers in the lit room.  An air gap extending 0.6m below ground separates the telescope pier and its foundation from the rest of the observatory.

 

Links:

 

1.  http://www.bisque.com  

2.  www.astrodon.com

3.  http://www.sxccd.com

4.  www.thinkman.com/dimension4/download.htm

5.  www.willbell.com/aip4win/aip.htm

6.  http://britastro.org/vss/VSS%20Photometry%20Spreadsheet%20B2.03.zip

7   http://www.peranso.com

8.  www.astrometrica.at/default.html?/download.html

9.  http://scully.cfa.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/checkmp.cgi